ABSTRACT
The preceding chapter was about ‘Knowledge’, not knowledge, and the criticisms brought against the former as a central educational aim were more or less independent of views on the nature, or availability, of the latter. To charge that the kinds of knowledge provided by the disciplines are not of the educational moment often assumed is not, of course, to deny that what is provided is indeed knowledge. Nietzsche does, however, have a great deal to say about the nature of knowledge, truth, objectivity, conceptual schemes, and scepticism: in short he has an epistemology and metaphysics. They are, moreover, of striking and stimulating originality. (One result of the strange neglect, in the English-speaking world, of Nietzsche’s views on truth and knowledge is that several of these are wrongly thought to be the original creations of later philosophers.) In this chapter, I hope to provide a sympathetic account of these ideas, one which will lend order among claims that, at fi rst blush, seem barely reconcilable. It is never easy to assess, though always easy to exaggerate, the impact of deep philosophical theses upon practice; but I think it will emerge, towards the end of the chapter, that Nietzsche’s philosophy of truth harmonizes well with the critique of ‘Knowledge’, and that it both complements and enriches the idea of an education revolving about the notion of authenticity.
